Week 12: Prejudice

Question 1

What is prejudice?

Answer 1

A negative prejudgment of a group and its individual members

Question 2

What is a stereotype?

Answer 2

a belief about the personal attributes of a group of people

can be positive or negative

Question 3

What is Discrimination?

Answer 3

unjustifiable negative behaviour toward a group or its members

Question 4

What are the 3 big sources of prejudice?

SMC

Answer 4

1. Social sources - social inequalities, socialization
2. Motivational sources - frustration & aggression, social identity theory
3. Cognitive sources - categorization, distinctiveness

Question 5

How does social inequalities influence prejudice?

Answer 5

• Justifying “status quo” - unequal status breeds prejudice
• Social dominance orientation

Question 6

What is Social dominance orientation?

Answer 6

Social dominance orientation - motivation to have one’s group be dominant over other social groups

Question 7

How does socialization influence prejudice?

Answer 7

• Authoritarian personality - teaches next gen the beliefs
• Ethnocentrism

Question 8

What is an Authoritarian personality?

Answer 8

Authoritarian personality - disposed to favour obedience to authority and intolerance of out-groups and lower status groups

Question 9

What is Ethnocentrism?

Answer 9

Ethnocentrism - belief in superiority of one’s own ethnic and cultural group, and having corresponding disdain for other groups

Question 10

How does Frustration (and aggression) influence prejudice?

Answer 10

• Prejudice towards others due to “displaced aggression”
• Realistic group conflict theory - prejudice arises from competition between groups for scarce resources

Question 11

How does social identity theory influence prejudice?

Answer 11

• We identify: We associate ourselves with certain groups (our in-groups) and gain self-esteem by doing so.
• We compare: We contrast our groups with other groups (out-groups), with a favourable bias toward our own groups.
• we have in-group bias

Question 12

When is in-group bias heightened?

Answer 12

when group is small and lower in status, relative to out-group

Question 13

What is infrahumanization?

Answer 13

in-group denying human attributes to out-group members

Question 14

How does categorization influence prejudice?

Answer 14

Spontaneous categorization provides a foundation for prejudice
* reliant on stereotypes

Question 15

When are we most reliant on stereotypes?

Answer 15

• tight on time
• preoccupied
• tired
• emotionally aroused

Question 16

What is the Out-group homogeneity effect?

Answer 16

perception of out-group members as more similar to one another than are in-group members

Question 17

What is the Own-race bias?

Answer 17

tendency for people to more accurately recognize faces of their own race

Question 18

How does distincitiveness influence prejudice?

Answer 18

Distinctiveness feeds self-consciousness
* greater sensitivity to how being perceived
* in turn, perceptions of others are misinterpreted
* e.g., Kleck & Strenta (1980): “disfigured” woman experiment

Vivid cases - i.e. using shortcuts if an individual has limited experience

Question 19

What is Group-serving bias?

Answer 19

dismissing out-group members’ positive behaviours; attributing negative behaviours to dispositions (while excusing such behaviour by own in-group)

Question 20

What are the 4 consequences of prejudice?

Answer 20

• Self-perpetuating prejudgments
• self-fulfilling prophecy
• Stereotype threat
• Biasing judgments of individuals

Question 21

What are Self-perpetuating prejudgments

Answer 21

• Prejudgments guide our attention and memories
• Prejudice involves preconceived judgments
• Prejudgments are inevitable
• Prejudgments are self-perpetuating - Subtyping. Helps maintain stereotypes

Question 22

What is Subtyping?

Answer 22

Subtyping - putting people who deviate into a different class of people

Question 23

What is a stereotype threat?

Answer 23

A disruptive concern, when facing a negative stereotype, that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype

Question 24

How does stereotype threat undermine performance? 3 ways

Answer 24

Increasing stress
Increasing self-monitoring
Suppressing unwanted thoughts and emotions

Question 25

How are judgments biased? 3 ways

Answer 25

• Strong stereotypes affect our judgments of individuals
• Stereotypes bias our interpretations of events.
• When our stereotypes are violated, we evaluate others more extremely